


wrecked and further shipwrecked

by tomatocages (kittu9)



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Handcuffs, Metaphors, Prompt Fill, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-03-07
Packaged: 2018-01-14 22:34:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1281271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittu9/pseuds/tomatocages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver could talk about the ties that bind, but he'd really rather not.</p><p>(“Metaphorically,” Sara repeats after him, when he tells her. “Wow. I didn’t know you even knew what a metaphor was.”)</p>
            </blockquote>





	wrecked and further shipwrecked

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spyglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spyglass/gifts).



> Title from the poem ["Half Omen Half Hope,"](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/246416) by Joanna Klink.
> 
>  
> 
> _prompted by spyglass (allstartstofade on tumblr): Oliver/Felicity, handcuffs._

Oliver’s had more experience being chained than he ever really wanted, which is to say, outside of that one role-play experiment back in his late teens,  _any_. Still, the experience allows him to recognize the signs, metaphorically. (“Metaphorically,” Sara repeats after him, when he tells her. “Wow. I didn’t know you even knew what a metaphor was.” He didn’t know; Felicity said something about it one time, Oliver had to look it up specifically in order to have this conversation. “Sorry,” Sara says, but Oliver can tell she doesn’t really mean it.)

 _Metaphorically_ , he’s handcuffed himself to Felicity. Oliver doesn't count what she does for him at night, because she gives of herself so effortlessly, in the dark. It's the day-in-and-out at the office, the way she bristles and still walks alongside him. He should have seen this coming: once she gained access to and control over his personal and professional calendars, it was only a matter of time. 

 

Case in point:

“You have a conference call in four minutes,” Felicity says when he gets into the office in the morning. “I’m only telling you now so you don’t have time to forget the code you need to dial in.” 

“Call Thea,” Felicity says, when he walks past her desk.

“Expense reports,” Felicity says, slapping a post-it note with his email password onto his monitor. “And if I catch you using this default instead of changing to and memorizing a new, secure password, we’re going to have _words_.”

 

It’s not a bad thing,  _per se_  (“Again with the vocabulary!” Sara says. Oliver is starting to regret telling her this, even if she’s the only person who might actually understand); it just means that wherever he goes, there’s a part of him that’s still with her, trying to keep her from harm. Felicity has made him responsible, when in many ways Oliver has never once been responsible, not in his entire life. It’s funny—not funny, strange—that just about any harm she comes to now will be of Oliver’s own making. 

(“Oh, Ollie, you’ve got it bad,” Sara says, still laughing, even if she at least sounds sympathetic. Sympathy, Oliver knows now, will never quite cut it.)

(Oliver rolls over, kisses her, runs his hand down her shoulder, cups her breast. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he says, which is really what he’s been trying to say the entire time.)


End file.
